The
loudspeakers announced that we would
stand there for five or ten minutes
in darkness while the aircraft
computer which controlled everything
'rebooted'. Not very encouraging for
a passenger to
hear.

January
18, 2008 (Thursday)Windsor
(England)

YESTERDAY'S diary item about
the Heathrow "incident"has attracted some
interesting emails. Here are some of
them:

Mike
R. points out: "Frying the wiring of an
airliner with an electro-magnetic pulse would be
quite difficult if it originated outside the
airframe. The metal skin acts as a perfect
shield to any stray electro static field. That
does not mean that the radios could not be
easily be destroyed since the pulse energy could
be picked up by the navigation/communication
antennas. The wiring used for aircraft controls
would not be compromised. Also all fly-by-wire
systems are designed with a minimum of triple
redundancy. Aircraft have been struck by
lightning on many occasions sending kilo-amperes
through the airframe with no disastrous
consequences.

"Destroying the wiring with a device located
on the inside would be considerably easier since
no shielding is present to attenuate the pulse
energy. However sneaking such a pulse generator
onboard would still require getting it through
security checks."

I reply at 7:34 p.m. "I think I mentioned the
possibility of a suicide passenger with a
device. In fact a professor at the Massachusetts
Institute of technology has made a detailed
study of EMP as the cause of death of three US
airliners including TWA 800 all brought down off
Long Island -- each took off within two minutes
of the same time of the same day of the week! I
agree that the Faraday-cage effect would seem to
militate against it. The professor, far brainier
than I, disagrees."

"I read your page with interest almost every
day," writes Sylvain
L. "Your commentary regarding the 777
and the sudden and unexplained loss of
electrical systems while 'on final' to Heathrow
as well as your reference to the Qantas ship
reminded me of a very curious incident which
ocurred in Western Canada recently:

An
Air Canada Boeing 767-300 sustained an
electronic systems failure over the Rockies
while bound from Victoria (not Vancouver),
and effected an emergency landing in Calgary.
The ship suddenly was thrown violently over
to port, then yawed to starboard. The
Wikipedia entry page for Air Canada states
that the aircraft sustained an on-board
computer failure which resulted in the
disengagement of the auto-pilot. The story
has been explained away as an form of rare
'invisible' high altitude turbulence. Then
the 'story' was changed to indicate that the
767 was flying too close behind and below an
Northwest Boeing 747 ship, also eastbound.
And flew into 'wake turbulence.'

These
incidents seem very similar; and I agree that
someone or some government (China?), is
'aggressively' testing some very high
altitude/low earth orbit pulse technology.
Reference was also made to the crash of the
[American Airlines] aircraft
[AA587] in New York, in January 2002,
while climbing out of LaGuardia/JFK, outbound
to South America or the Caribbean, which
appears to have been blown up; or critically
disabled by the sudden violent bisection of
the vertical stabilizer from the tail of the
aircraft. This was also explained away as
'wake turbulence.' The reference to the
NorthWest aircraft is also very interesting;
I believe that it was this aircraft that was
the intended target. And the technology - or
those testing it, mistook the radar signature
of the Air Canada aircraft for the NW ship
flying the same airspace.

Someone
is lying. As usual.

10:08 p.m: I reply, "I remember about five
years ago being on a flight in San Francisco; we
were about to take off, already on the runway,
when the plane's onboard computer suddenly
failed and the voice over the loudspeakers
announced that we would stand there for five or
ten minutes in darkness while the computer which
controlled everything 'rebooted'. Not very
encouraging for a passenger to hear, I might
add."

MORE book orders. More letters about the
plane crash, and several congratulatory
messages.

Donald
E. Pauly, a commercial airplane and
helicopter pilot in from Las Vegas, points out:
"Since the aircraft did not burn, my guess was
that it was out of fuel and pilot error was the
cause. Aviation Week says not so, which probably
settles the issue. It is hard to believe in
engine failure as the flight controls for both
engines are triply redundant. Perhaps they were
running Windows which would explain
everything."

I send him this reply at once:

The
point about the wreckage not burning caught
my attention immediately. One undercarriage
strut punches clean through the wing (and
fuel-tanks?) and nothing comes out? Nothing?
A few commentators have hinted disbelievingly
at the out-of-fuel possibility, and the
massive publicity hype given by British
Airways to the bravery and professionalism of
its cabin crew and pilots might suggest
damage-control. I would not go with pilot
error even in this case, however -- more
likely would be a system-fault in the
fuel-level readings.